Running the Era

This chapter is for the Game Master. It covers table tone, seven campaign modes, using real history at the table, scene frameworks, pacing and the Era Cast. The tables a GM rolls on (the dates to use, rumors, road encounters and depot complications) are in Places and Campaign Tools, Part Three. Rules are in Era Rules and are cited here by name. Dates and institutions come from The Era, Factions and Powers, Cheyenne, Denver and the Historical Reference.

The GM's Approach

Accuracy and Rolls

The record decides what the world contains: the railroad, the treaty lines, the licensed saloon, the sheriff with two deputies, the territory where women vote and the territory next door where they do not. Keep those facts as written. Roll only for the parts of the world that carry a decision: a long ride, a bad winter or a hard bargain is worth a roll only when something depends on the result.

Four working principles:

1. The record wins over the genre. Where a Western film and the record differ, run the record. The Historical Reference, Part Four, lists the common cases (see What Hollywood Gets Wrong, below).
2. Most characters are competent at ordinary life. A drover can saddle a horse, cook a meal, mend a harness and read weather. A clerk can keep books. A laundress can run a business. Do not call for a check on any of it. Call for a check when a person, a clock or a consequence stands in the way.
3. No survival bookkeeping. Do not track food, water, ammunition counts below a scene's needs, or feed for horses beyond the Keeping a Horse rule. Living expenses are covered by the Role's Pay (Money and Credit). Journeys are narrated with at most one hazard (Travel at the Table).
4. Pressure comes from people. The best trouble in the corridor is a creditor, a clerk, a council, a posted notice, a hungry camp or a neighbor with a grudge. Weather and distance are the setting; institutions with competing aims supply the plots.

When to Add Harsher Realism

The default is grounded and playable. Add weight only when the table asks for it, and add it one dial at a time.

Agree on the dials before the first session. Do not raise a dial in the middle of play without warning the table.

Campaign Modes

Each mode below is a way to run a whole campaign. A mode names a premise, the powers in play (all from Factions and Powers), recurring hooks and typical scenes. Any mode can be played with the Era Cast: Deveney and Marchand as patrons, Tolliver, Ybarra, Harrow, Wong and the two Tribal characters as player characters, Carrick as the recurring adversary. Real people are not used as NPCs (see Real People at the Table).

Mixing is expected. The railroad investigation runs into the cattlemen; the diplomacy game runs into the Army. Pick one mode as the spine and let the others walk in. The Campaign Frame in Places and Campaign Tools gives six dated sessions from 1869 to 1876; a mode can run inside that frame or on its own.

The Oglala Lakota warrior and the Northern Cheyenne interpreter in the other modes. Mode Five is theirs; the others seat them this way. In the cattleman campaign the warrior is a hunter who sells meat and hides to an outfit, or a guide across hunting country the drive must cross, and the interpreter is the go-between on an agency beef contract. In the railroad investigation the survey crosses the treaty line (Harrow's tie) and the interpreter is the only person who can say what the camps were told. In the political drama a delegation passes through Cheyenne on its way to the agency or Washington, and the interpreter is hired by the side that wants its words read right. In frontier law a wrong between one of the nations' people and a settler is a federal matter brought through the agent (Law in Play, the 1868 treaty's Article I), so the deputy marshal needs a witness and an interpreter. In the freight game the trader's wagon is bound for an agency, and the warrior knows which trader sells whiskey. In the urban game a delegation is at the Denver depot and the town is watching. The warrior answers to his band and the interpreter to her family and her employer; the table says why each rides with the party, as the Pregenerated Characters' Ties do.

Mode One: A Cattleman Campaign

Cattlemen are financiers and employers with differing interests. Most hands are wage laborers. Some outfits paid a Tejano or Black hand less for the same work (Anselmo Ybarra's background shows it); the Prejudice rule handles this at the pay window, with an audience and a marker.

Mode Two: A Railroad Investigation

The railroad is an employer with its own interests, a private police force with no public authority, and a map that other powers dispute.

Mode Three: A Political Drama

Run the political mode as an investigation into who owes whom. Wyoming women voting is a fact of the setting and a source of scenes. Colorado voters rejected the vote for women on 2 October 1877, which is after the range and can be a rumor the players cannot yet know.

Mode Four: Frontier Law

The law is thin and slow. Most matters end in a hearing and a fine. Build scenes on the gap between the paper and the practice rather than on quick-draw contests.

Mode Five: A Tribal Diplomacy Game

Run a council as a series of scenes. Stakes is not a rule for treaty councils (Era Rules, Stakes). Use Prejudice for the Attitudes of agents, officers and councils, and set the Attitude of a council by its own interests, as the Sample Audiences table shows for a Tribal council hearing an agent's offer. An agreement with one leader binds that leader's band or society; the Bureau and the Army often forget it, and the players should not.

Mode Six: A Trader and Freight Game

Army officers and agents watched for the sale of whiskey or arms to a Tribal Nation, and it is a ready source of trouble. Both Tribal traders and white traders appear in the freight game, and the agency store is where credit against hides and goods was extended.

Mode Seven: A Cheyenne-Denver Urban Game

Use the rail line as the campaign's spine. Most urban adventures start from a ticket, a manifest or a telegram.

Real People at the Table

Real people are not characters, NPCs or stat blocks. The Historical Reference holds dated entries for people, events and institutions, each with an "At the table" line. Use it this way.

1. Use the office, not the officeholder. The governor, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the post commander, the department commander, the editor, the president of the railroad. An NPC may be the governor's secretary or the commander's adjutant, and the office speaks through that NPC.
2. Use the event, not the person. The table can arrive at a treaty council, a Black Hills expedition or a stage departure without any famous person speaking. Describe the scene by what happens: who is present by role, what is said by office, what follows.
3. Use the institution. The Army, the Union Pacific, the stock association, the Cheyenne Leader, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Institutions have habits, rules and agendas a GM can play.
4. Hear them at one remove. A rumor, a notice, a newspaper item or a reported speech may mention a real person. The players never meet him or her, and the GM never gives that person lines or a roll.
5. Dates are anchors. Let the dated events come when they come. The players may be nearby, may be caught by them or may hear of them later; they do not replace or relocate them.
6. No stats or secrets. Give no real person a stat block, a skill or a secret.

If a table wants a famous name in a scene, treat it as a name the characters have heard of, and ask what the fictional people around that name want.

Alternate-History Cautions

The default campaign follows the record. If the table wants to change it, agree and note it before play.

The players change their corner of the world: a herd delivered, a prisoner held, a message carried, a debt paid. They do not change the nation.

Scenes and Encounter Frameworks

A session is a chain of scenes. The frameworks below use the Showdown, Notoriety and Stakes (Era Rules) and Prejudice (Attitude).

Three encounter shapes recur.

• Talk first, shoot later. Open with a Showdown or a hearing. If it ends in a Draw, the winning side takes the first slot of round one, and the fight is short.
• The long way around. Give the players a faster route that crosses a jurisdiction: a county line, a treaty line, an Army post. The faster route is a scene with an official, not a roll.
• The bill comes due. Let a past choice (a Bounty, a Debt, a Name) appear in a scene several sessions later.

Pacing a Session

A session of about three hours has a rhythm that suits the rules.

Rules of pace:

• Cut the journey. Start in the next town and say how long the road took.
• Show the clock. A train, a court term, a deadline on a note, a season.
• End on a decision. Stop a session on a choice, a posted notice or an arrival, not on a roll.
• Use the rumor table (Places and Campaign Tools) at the end of a session to carry the world forward.
• Allow quiet sessions. A session built on a hearing needs no fight.

Advancing the calendar. Move the date at the end of every session and say it aloud, because the rules keep time in months and seasons.

• Each session, choose how much time passed: a day, a week, a month. The Campaign Frame moves years between its sessions; a mode moves weeks.
• At the end of each month, every Debt due that month falls due (Money and Credit); a creation Debt falls due at the end of the second month. A character out of work for the month is Broke.
• At the end of each season, Notoriety drops by 1 for every character who stayed out of the news and outside its Reach (Lie Low makes it monthly), and a chronic illness in remission may return (Illness).
• At twelve months, a Bounty with no new offense lapses (Notoriety and Bounty).
• By the calendar, use the corridor's own clock: the district court sits in a county twice a year, the roundup is spring, the Texas herds arrive from midsummer, the roads north close in the worst of winter, and Dates to Use (Places and Campaign Tools) arrive whether the party is there or not.

Running the Cast

The Era Cast are fictional ordinary people of the period. The Pregenerated Characters chapter owns the player characters; the Adversaries chapter owns Wade Carrick's stat block. This section covers how to run each as a patron, an ally or a rival.

Notes for the GM:

• Deveney's commission. He is a deputy U.S. marshal: federal warrants anywhere in Wyoming, territorial ones only beside the sheriff. The real marshals and sheriffs are in Cheyenne and Historical Reference.
• Marchand's house. Deals are made there. Do not play scenes inside the sporting trade; show Marchand's business through what she knows and whom she knows.
• Carrick. He is affable, patient and has buyers. Players solve him with a ledger, a witness or a posse, not a duel.

What Hollywood Gets Wrong

Each correction is in the Historical Reference, Part Four. The table gives the GM action.